What's a Radical?

I use the terms "radical" and "radical left" quite regularly when discussing the antwar left and multicultural racial victimologists.

But what really is a radical?

I offered a couple of definitions in my earlier post, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama." For example, according to Leon Baradat's Political Ideologies:

...a radical may defined as a person who is extremely dissastified with the society as it is and therefore is impatient with less than extreme proposals for changing it. Hence, all radicals favor an immediate and fundamental change in the society. In other words, all radicals favor revolutionary change.

One of the points I've made in the "No Enemies" series is that radicals don't necessarily have to advocate political violence as a means for revolutionary transformation.

Further, I contend that today's "progressive" activists constitute a contemporary radical movement seeking to use the electoral process to achieve a dramatic and fundamental transformation of American political and social institutions. Recall though that the notion of "progressive" has been appropriated by far-left activists in order to make their radical agenda more acceptable):

The term 'progressive' has evolved a great deal over the past 35 years. By the ’70s, many ’60s veterans had concluded that working 'within the system' had become a viable option. As a result, many leftists stopped using rhetoric and slogans that had marginalized them from the political mainstream. Labels like 'radical', 'leftist', and 'revolutionary' sounded stale and gratuitously provocative. And so, gradually, activists began to use the much less threatening 'progressive.' Today, 'progressive' is the term of choice for practically everyone who has a politics that used to be called 'radical.'

Progressives of late prefer electoral mobilization over direct action to bring about radical transformation. For example, the Nation, in writing about the antiwar movement's robust backing of Democratic congressional candidates, indicated an electoral strategy is the most viable option - "barring a draft or a radical turn in public opinion that would once again bring people en masse into the streets" - to bring about a political realignment committed to implementing the left's total surrender agenda in Iraq.

Electoral mobilization to bring about radical left-wing change is also seen in this definition from the folks at Daily Kos themselves:

The term radical, as applied to political theory and ideology, denotes someone who believes in an ideology or theory that doesn't accept the status quo of society as natural, apolitical, or the way things should be simply by virtue of being the way things are. Virtually all radical ideologies and theories seek to challenge the status quo, to question how things came to be as they are, why they came to be this way, and whose interest things being this way serves.

Most, though not all, radical ideologies and theories also argue that the status quo cannot be fixed by piecemeal reforms and that a more fundamental restructuring of society is necessary to achieve their goals. This may include advocating the armed overthrow of the existing social structure, as in Marxist-Leninism, but often also takes other forms such as many modern socialists who advocate for a democratic means of revolution.

So, according to Daily Kos activists and writers, reforms that might bring about a fundamental restructuring of society - a democratic revolution - can be achieved through "other means."

Now, hardcore opposition to Iraq has been the sine quo non among left blogosphere's main spokespeople, like Daily Kos, Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald, and The Impolitic. But radicalism goes beyond opposition to the war to include far left-wing positions on the entire range of major political and social issues facing the country.

Let's lay out the bases of this radicalism. With apologies to Joe Klein, left wing extremism:

* believes the United States is a fundamentally negative force in the world.
* believes that American imperialism is the primary cause of Islamic radicalism.
* believes the Iraq war was a consequence of America's fundamental imperialistic nature.
* believes capitalism is largely a force for social oppression.
* believes American society is fundamentally racist and unfair.
* believes intractable problems like crime and poverty are primarily the fault of society.
* believes that corporations are fundamentally evil.
* believes religious faith is a source of intolerance, for example, against gays.

This is simply a typology of positions, and logically not all self-professed "progressives" would slide neatly into the rubric.

Many would, however. Indeed, some of the "aggressive progressives" of the Democratic Party have aligned themselves with the most implacable foes of the Iraq war currently on the scene.

Recall, of course, that some of these antiwar progressives have formally endorsed Barack Obama's campaign.

See also my introduction to the series, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

King Prophecies Foreshadowed Obama and Wright, Says Dyson

Michael Eric Dyson, at the Los Angeles Times, seeks to rehabilitate the hate sermons of Jeremiah Wright by conflating the Chicago reverend's black liberation America-bashing with Martin Luther King's late-1960s-era sermons, where the civil rights leader assuaged his frustration at the glacial pace of integration by increasing the intensity of his promised-land theological preaching.

Here's Dyson's

Before 1965, King was upbeat and bright, his belief in white America's ability to change by moral suasion resilient and durable. That is the leader we have come to know during annual King commemorations. After 1965, King was darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion.

King's skepticism and anger were often muted when he spoke to white America, but they routinely resonated in black sanctuaries and meeting halls across the land. Nothing highlights that split - or white America's ignorance of it and the prophetic black church King inspired - more than recalling King's post-1965 odyssey, as he grappled bravely with poverty, war and entrenched racism. That is the King who emerges as we recall the meaning of his death. After the grand victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, King turned his attention to poverty, economic injustice and class inequality. King argued that those "legislative and judicial victories did very little to improve" Northern ghettos or to "penetrate the lower depths of Negro deprivation." In a frank assessment of the civil rights movement, King said the changes that came about from 1955 to 1965 "were at best surface changes" that were "limited mainly to the Negro middle class." In seeking to end black poverty, King told his staff in 1966 that blacks "are now making demands that will cost the nation something. ... You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then."

King's conclusion? "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism." He didn't say this in the mainstream but to his black colleagues.

Similarly, although King spoke famously against the Vietnam War before a largely white audience at Riverside Church in New York in 1967, exactly a year before he died, he reserved some of his strongest antiwar language for his sermons before black congregations. In his own pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, two months before his death, King raged against America's "bitter, colossal contest for supremacy." He argued that God "didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world today," preaching that "we are criminals in that war" and that we "have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world." King insisted that God "has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, 'Don't play with me, Israel. Don't play with me, Babylon. Be still and know that I'm God. And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power.' "

Dyson goes on to extrapolate from King's frustration to the current controversy over Barack Obama's Wright affair:

Obama has seized on the early King to remind Americans about what we can achieve when we allow our imaginations to soar high as we dream big. Wright has taken after the later King, who uttered prophetic truths that are easily caricatured when snatched from their religious and racial context. What united King in his early and later periods is the incurable love that fueled his hopefulness and rage. As King's example proves, as we dream, we must remember the poor and vulnerable who live a nightmare. And as we strike out in prophetic anger against injustice, love must cushion even our hardest blows.

Unfortunately, the real caricature here is Dyson's.

His analysis of Dr. King's later political and theological adjustments have been ripped from the tumult of the era in which King lived. By 1965 the inner cities had begun to violently chafe at continued economic disenfranchisement and the Black Power movement had begun to marginalize traditional civil rights leaders as out of touch with demands for change. Further, the war in Vietnam had become an increasing focus to many in the movement. Dr. King was personally torn over the appropriate response to the slow pace of progress change, not to mention the stressful demands of various constituencies pulling him to and fro - all of this when the Johnson administration's civil rights and policy programs were still in the development and implemenation phase.

As David J. Garrow has shown, in Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King and the civil rights movement faced increasing political difficulties, and the wear and tear had upending Dr. King's stability:

More and more, in public and private, King spoke of the inner turmoil that plagued him. "We often develop inferiority complexes and we stumble through life with a feeling of insecurity, a lack of self-confidence, and a sense of impending failure," he told the Ebenezer congregation one Sunday [in September 1967]. "A fear of what life may bring," he went on, "encourages some persons to wander aimlessly along the frittering road of excessive drink and sexual promiscuity," a more personal revelation than his listeners realized. Even in the darkest moments, faith in God gave him the inner equilibrium to face life's problems and "conquer fear." "I know this. I know it from my own personal experience."

According to Garrow's biography, the rush of fame and power weighed heavily on Dr. King, and he questioned the efficacy of his long-standing commitment to peaceful change through civil disobedience.

This context is lacking in Dyson's account. Indeed, Dyson's comparison of Dr. King's preaching discounts the significance of his most important speechs, like the "I Have a Dream" speech, considered one of the most important public statement on civil rights and political philosophy in American history.

Jeremiah Wright can't hold a candle to the King legacy, and allusions to Dr. King prophecies being reborn in "God Damn America" sermons do a grave injustice to the King family on this day 40 years after Dr. King's death.

Thankfully, Juan Williams, at the Wall Street Journal, has placed Dr. King's legacy in the proper relation to Obama's Wright controversy, suggesting the original uplifting message of the Obama campaign has given way to identity politics and racial grievance (via Memeorandum):

Mr. Obama has carried a message of pride and self-sufficiency to black voters nationwide, who have rewarded him with support reaching 80% and higher. His candidacy has become, as the headline on Ebony magazine put it, a matter of having a black man as president "In Our Lifetime."

Among his white supporters, race is coincidental, not central, to his political identity. Mr. Obama is to them the candidate who personifies the promise of equal opportunity for all. But as black support has become central to his victories, this idealistic view has been increasingly at war with the portrayal, crafted by the senator to win black support, of him as the black candidate. The terrible tension between these racially distinct views now surrounds and threatens his campaign.

So far, Mr. Obama has been content to let black people have their vision of him while white people hold to a separate, segregated reality. He is a politician and, unlike King, his goal is winning votes, not changing hearts. Still, it is a key break from the King tradition to sell different messages to different audiences based on race, and to fail to challenge racial divisions in the nation.

Mr. Obama's major speech on race last month was forced from him only after a political crisis erupted: It became widely known that he'd sat for 20 years in the pews of a church where Rev. Jeremiah Wright lashed out at white people. The minister cursed America as worthy of damnation, made lewd suggestions about the nature of President Clinton's relationship with black voters, and embraced the paranoid idea that the white government was spreading AIDS among black people.

Here is where the racial tension at the heart of Mr. Obama's campaign flared into view. He either shared these beliefs or, lacking good judgment, decided it politically expedient for an ambitious young black politician trying to prove his solidarity with all things black, to be associated with these rants. His judgment and leadership on the critical issue of race is in question.

While speaking to black people, King never condescended to offer Rev. Wright-style diatribes or conspiracy theories. He did not paint black people as victims. To the contrary, he spoke about black people as American patriots who believed in the democratic ideals of the country, in nonviolence and the Judeo-Christian ethic, even as they overcame slavery, discrimination and disadvantage. King challenged white America to do the same, to live up to their ideals and create racial unity. He challenged white Christians, asking them how they could treat their fellow black Christians as anything but brothers in Christ.

When King spoke about the racist past, he gloried in black people beating the odds to win equal rights by arming "ourselves with dignity and self-respect." He expressed regret that some black leaders reveled in grievance, malice and self-indulgent anger in place of a focus on strong families, education and love of God. Even in the days before Congress passed civil rights laws, King spoke to black Americans about the pride that comes from "assuming primary responsibility" for achieving "first class citizenship."

Read the whole thing.

As Williams makes clear, Obama's pandering to black grievance and vicitimization is opposed to the centrality of the King legacy: As the barriers to justice and opportunities fall, black individualism and self-sufficiency have to rise to meet the coming challenges.

Michael Eric Dyson takes Dr. King's personal turmoil out of context, pushing a revisionist interpretation of the slain civil rights hero's words and legacy to legitimize a black liberation anti-Americanism that has been roundly repudiated in the court of public opinion.

Sometimes You Have to Draw Lines: John Yoo Responds

Just yesterday Glenn Greenwald accused John Yoo of war crimes.

Greenwald, of course, is leading the left's blogospheric attack on Yoo, who was Assistant Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel, and the reviled author of the "torture memos" outlining the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation techniques.

It turns out that Yoo's got an interview forthcoming in Esquire, which is excerpted today. I particulary liked Yoo's response to the jab that he's not the kind of guy who'd employ purportedly inhumane definitions of torture, like this:

...intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result.

Here's Yoo's reply to this "not-the-kind-of-guy" angle:

This is unpleasant. Don’t interpret what I’m saying as oh I was happy to do this or eager, or I felt some satisfaction. Mainly because I had read what the British and the Israelis had gone through -- they had their own struggle with this issue and they had their own judicial decisions -- and I had read all kinds of articles and books about this issue. I mean, it’s a difficult issue. You have to draw the line. What the government is doing is unpleasant. It’s the use of violence. I don’t disagree with that. But I also think that part of the job unfortunately of being a lawyer sometimes is you have to draw those lines. I think I could have written it in a much more -- we could have written it in a much more palatable way, but it would have been vague.

Read the whole thing.

Yoo's apparently a very mild-mannered fellow who's routinely booed at colloquia and speaking engagements by student antiwar ayatollahs.

In any case, as noted, much is being written this week about extreme interrogations amid the release of Yoo's 2003 legal memorandum, which is widely regarded at supplying the "green light" for coercive methods outside of stateside constitutional channels (for the "green light" meme, see Vanity Fair and Harpers).

Yoo's legal theories, of course, will never be forgiven by the paranoid left. It's not the terrorists seeking our destruction who're dangerous, it's the Bush administration itself.

Never mind the fact that for deeply principled, philosophical reasons we might need to consider the selective use of torture against our enemies. As Jerome Slater has argued in advocating aggressive interrogations:

Put differently, so long as the threat of large-scale terrorist attacks against innocents is taken seriously, as it must be, it is neither practicable nor morally persuasive to absolutely prohibit the physical coercion or even outright torture of captured terrorist plotters—undoubtedly evils, but lesser evils than preventable mass murder. In any case, although the torture issue is still debatable today, assuredly the next major attack on the United States—or perhaps Europe—will make it moot. At that point, the only room for practical choice will be between controlled and uncontrolled torture—if we are lucky. Far better, then, to avoid easy rhetoric and think through the issue while we still have the luxury of doing so.

Slater was writing a few years ago, but now, more than ever, even the slightest mention of torture elicits the most violent knee-jerk reaction among the vanguard of the surrendering antiwar contingents.

But Yoo's right: Sometimes we need to think about this stuff. Sometimes we have to draw those lines between the thinkable and the unthinkable, to think about what indeed needs to be done to protect American national security, unflinchingly, without succumbing to the natural human impulse to recoil from the commitment of requisite acts.

More Far-Left Hackery!

It was just the other day that Think Progress had to issue an apology and retraction for erroneously accusing John McCain of plagiarism.

Now less than a week later we have another round of far-left hackery against another reviled neocon warmonger: Firedoglake and Democracy Arsenal have both attacked Senator Joseph Lieberman for his statements on Iran's role in Iraq.

Jane "Hammering" Hamsher calls Lieberman an "attack chihuahua" for questioning Barack Obama's credibilty in his attacks on John McCain's Iraq statements on FOX News (via YouTube):

More egregiously, Ilan Goldenberg at Democracy Arsenal attempts to smear Leiberman's knowledge of Iran and Islam, claiming that McCain's surrogates are taking "Barack blasting" to a new level with attacks allegedly ignorant of Islamic sectarianism.

Not to worry. James Kirchick clears things up with a succinct slap-down:

Ilan Goldenberg of the National Security Network claims that, in an interview yesterday, Joe Lieberman said:

If we did what Sen. Obama wanted us to do last year, Al-Qaeda in Iran would be in control of Iraq today.

Goldenberg is apparently a believer in the meme that Sunnis and Shia's can never work together, exclaiming "There's no such thing as Al Qaeda in Iran!" Never mind the fact that the 9/11 Commission actually did find extensive ties between Al Qaeda and Iran (in that several of the hijackers passed through Iran in the months leading up to the attack, that "Iran made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with Al Qaeda after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole," that Iran harbored Al Qaeda members after the fall of the Taliban, etc. etc.), what Lieberman actually said was "Al-Qaeda and Iran." Watch the interview here.

Goldenberg cites Jane Hamsher, of the liberal blog firedoglake, as his source for this amazing find. She's a reliable figure on matters involving Lieberman, having once doctored a photo of the Connecticut Senator in blackface. So I'm sure she would never distort something as pedantic as this. Apparently the credulosphere isn't just illiterate when it comes to terrorism, but the English language as well.

Update: The transcript of the interview is here. Perhaps Goldenberg and Hamsher will correct their mistakes.

Don't bet on it. America-bashing radicals rarely concede their ignorance.

See also, Michael Goldfarb, "The New Art of Inventing Gaffes," who includes beer-addled Flophouse blogger Matthew Yglesias to the hideous hacking cohort (via Memeorandum).

Basra Breakout: The Second Iran-Iraq War

Well, thank goodness for the Kagans. This neocon couple consistently provides some of the most important analyses on Iraq, including last week's fighting, despite the best efforts of antiwar detractors to paint Basra as this year's Tet.

Kimberly Kagan, for example, argues that Iran's assistance to renegade militias in Iraq indicates the next phase of strategic competition in the Middle East: "The Second Iran-Iraq War":

Iran now causes the majority of the violence and instability in Iraq, a trend that began in July 2007, according to U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, when U.S. and Iraqi military offensives swept al Qaeda from its safe havens around Baghdad.

Senior officials of the Iranian government, the U.S. military has noted in press briefings, support and in some cases control, illegal armed groups that are fighting American forces and undermining the Iraqi government. In particular, the recent fighting in Basra and Baghdad is not at root a civil war between Iraqi Shia political factions, but an ongoing struggle between the Iraqi government and illegal militias organized, trained, equipped and funded by Iran.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Security Forces are now fighting these militias, a long-standing demand of the U.S. that was articulated in congressional benchmarks in 2006. The question for Americans is simple: Will we support Iraq in this fight, or abandon its government and people?

Iran has sponsored illegal militias since the formation of the Maliki government in 2006. The Qods Force, Iran's premier terrorist training team and exporter of its revolution, provided between $750,000 and $3 million-worth of equipment and funding to Iraq's militias monthly in the first half of 2007, according to U.S. Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner. In addition, the U.S. military and the press note that Lebanese Hezbollah under Qods Force auspices directly trained Iraqi fighters, sending military advisers to help Moqtada al-Sadr create the Mahdi Army in August 2003, to train Iraqi militias inside Iran in 2005, and to advise the militias inside Iraq since 2006.

The Iranian-trained militias operated in 2006-2008 as units known as Special Groups or Secret Cells, ostensibly claiming to serve within Mr. Sadr's militia. In reality, the U.S. military says their titular leader – the ex-Sadrist Qais Khazali – reported to a Lebanese Hezbollah commander, who in turn reported to the highest Qods Force leaders.

The foreign advisers organized these Iraqi opposition groups into a Hezbollah-style structure. The Special Groups kidnapped Iraqi government officials, ran death squads against Iraqi civilians, and regularly rocketed and mortared the Green Zone with Iranian-imported weapons. They smuggled in and placed highly-lethal, explosively-formed projectiles (EFPs) to kill U.S. soldiers. In short, Iranian-backed Special Groups prevented Iraq's government from effectively controlling the country in 2006, even removing some of the Mahdi Army from Mr. Sadr's control. In the recent clashes, the Special Groups coordinated the unrest and attacks of the regular Mahdi Army in the capital and provinces. In Baghdad, the Mahdi Army, in turn, facilitated Special Groups' movements....

The recent fighting in Iraq has also revealed much about our enemies. The intensity of Special Groups activities rose from January to March; U.S. and Iraqi forces found the large caches of EFPs and new Iranian rockets that often precede a Special Groups offensive. The Basra operations seem to have prompted the Special Groups and the Mahdi Army to launch this offensive prematurely, not according to plan. It did not succeed....

These events provide an enormous opportunity for either the U.S. or for Iran – and whichever state responds most intelligently and quickly to the circumstances on the ground will gain the benefit. The U.S. should encourage the Iraqi government to defeat Iran's proxies and agents, and should provide the requisite assistance. It should encourage and support the Iraqi government's laudable determination to establish the rule of law throughout Iraq, not just where U.S. forces are present....

Above all, the U.S. must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq. Iranian agents and military forces are actively attacking U.S. forces and the government of Iraq. Every rocket that lands in the Green Zone should remind us that Iran's aims are evidently not benign – they are at best destabilizing and at worst hegemonic. The U.S. must defeat al Qaeda in Iraq, and protect Iraq from the direct military intervention of Iran. Failure to do so will invite Iranian domination of an Arab state that now seeks to be our ally.

Note too that in contrast to the bitter denunciations of Iraq's military contingents - last week, for example, at Memeorandum - the battles between government troops and outlaw militias reveal considerable military capabilities among Iraq's indegenious security forces.

For the last few years war critics have ridiculed the Iraqi army, hammering over and over, "When are they going to stand up?"

Well, this is Iraq's military breakout, with the nation's soldiers standing tall. Americans should be standing up behind them.

Barack Obama's Antiwar Coalition

I've been researching a post on "paleoconservatism," so I'm intrigued to see Philip Giraldi's new essay over at the Huffington Post, "Obama the Conservative Choice."

Giraldi's highlighting Andrew Bacevich and his endorsement of Barack Obama at the American Conservative.

This is a very interesting development, holding considerable significance for the fall election if Obama's the nominee.

Here's a bit from Giraldi:

Many traditional conservatives (not the neocon subspecies) are embarrassed by George Bush and are looking for a way out of the foreign and domestic policy nightmare that he has engineered. They also understand that John McCain would be more of the same or even worse. There is a lively discussion of Barack Obama that is taking place both in the blogosphere and in the media directed at a conservative audience, and much of the discourse is surprisingly receptive to the idea that Obama, though a liberal, could bring about genuine change that will benefit the country. A recent article by Boston University professor and former army officer Andrew Bacevich appeared in The American Conservative magazine and is available on the internet at www.amconmag.com. It is entitled "The Case for Obama" and makes the point that Obama is a candidate that is certainly no conservative, but he is the only real hope to get out of Iraq and also avoid wars of choice in the future. Bacevich rightly sees the Iraq war and its consequences as a truly existential issue for the United States, one that should be front and center for voters in November. Any more adventures of the Iraq type will surely bankrupt the country and destroy what remains of the constitution. Bacevich also notes that the election of John McCain, candidate of the neoconservatives and the war party, would guarantee an unending series of preemptive wars as US security doctrine and would validate the disastrous decisions to invade Iraq and wage an interminable global war on "terrorists." Electing Obama instead would be as close as one could come to making a definitive judgment on the folly of Iraq and everything that it represents, a judgment that is long overdue. Many conservatives would agree that the Obama commitment to leave Iraq is the right way to go and long to return to the days when America only went to war when a vital interest was threatened.

Note Giraldi's conclusion:

Obama for president is beginning to look pretty good to many conservatives and that means that a Barack Obama Administration might actually bridge the gap between right and left, finally bringing together American citizens who are intent on righting the foundering ship of state rather than preserving the status quo. Clinton and McCain represent little more than two nightmarish visions of an out-of-touch political reality that has manifestly failed and should be rejected.

The point's left unsaid by Giraldi, but it's Clinton and McCain's Iraq authorization votes that tie them together in this "nightmarish vision" that should be rejected.

But what's key here is how Bacevich himself describes the agenda of "conservatives for Obama." Notice, for example, how Bacevich demonizes McCain in classic antiwar style:

Social conservatives counting on McCain to return the nation to the path of righteousness are kidding themselves....

Above all, conservatives who think that a McCain presidency would restore a sense of realism and prudence to U.S. foreign policy are setting themselves up for disappointment. On this score, we should take the senator at his word: his commitment to continuing the most disastrous of President Bush’s misadventures is irrevocable. McCain is determined to remain in Iraq as long as it takes. He is the candidate of the War Party. The election of John McCain would provide a new lease on life to American militarism, while perpetuating the U.S. penchant for global interventionism marketed under the guise of liberation.

Noam Chomsky couldn't have issued a stronger antiwar denunciation!

But Bacevich continues by laying out the "conservative" case for Obama:

So why consider Obama? For one reason only: because this liberal Democrat has promised to end the U.S. combat role in Iraq. Contained within that promise, if fulfilled, lies some modest prospect of a conservative revival.

To appreciate that possibility requires seeing the Iraq War in perspective. As an episode in modern military history, Iraq qualifies at best as a very small war....

As part of the larger global war on terrorism, Iraq has provided a pretext for expanding further the already bloated prerogatives of the presidency. To see the Iraq War as anything but misguided, unnecessary, and an abject failure is to play into the hands of the fear-mongers who insist that when it comes to national security all Americans (members of Congress included) should defer to the judgment of the executive branch. Only the president, we are told, can “keep us safe.” Seeing the war as the debacle it has become refutes that notion and provides a first step toward restoring a semblance of balance among the three branches of government.

Now Bacevich is channeling Glenn Greenwald!

You see, the arguments of "conservatives for Obama" aren't so different from "progressives for Obama," which is why Giraldi can argue that "a Barack Obama Administration might actually bridge the gap between right and left.

Actually, there's not much to bridge. Paleoconservatives have become so reactionary in their opposition to Iraq - and the American national security state - that they've simply tied the loop of the ideological continuum, joining the radical left with the reactionary right in common hatred of the Bush administration's war in Iraq, and GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

In fact, the only thing plausibly new about Bacevich's position is that he's openly rooting for the other side of the traditional liberal/conservative split.

David Frum explains the extreme antiwar positions of the paleoconservatives in his article, "Unpatriotic Conservatives":

From the very beginning of the War on Terror, there has been dissent, and as the war has proceeded to Iraq, the dissent has grown more radical and more vociferous. Perhaps that was to be expected. But here is what never could have been: Some of the leading figures in this antiwar movement call themselves "conservatives."

These conservatives are relatively few in number, but their ambitions are large. They aspire to reinvent conservative ideology: to junk the 50-year-old conservative commitment to defend American interests and values throughout the world — the commitment that inspired the founding of this magazine — in favor of a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies....

The antiwar conservatives aren't satisfied merely to question the wisdom of an Iraq war. Questions are perfectly reasonable, indeed valuable. There is more than one way to wage the war on terror, and thoughtful people will naturally disagree about how best to do it, whether to focus on terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah or on states like Iraq and Iran; and if states, then which state first?

But the antiwar conservatives have gone far, far beyond the advocacy of alternative strategies. They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies.

Frum does not cite Bacevich in the article, as he was writing shortly after the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But Bacevich's positions criticizing "the new American militarism" are well known, for example, in his books and articles appearing at prominent antiwar websites and publications.

Even far-left bloggers can't get enough of Bacevich's anti-militarist thesis!

Note that Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University, is a graduate of West Point who served in Vietam. His son, also named Andrew J. Bacevich, was killed in Iraq in 2007. (Bacevich wrote about his son's death in a Washington Post essay.)

Credentials like these give a certain authority or gravitas to Bacevich's views, and his service to country and the loss of his son are to be respected.

Nevertheless, the paleoconservative case for Barack Obama's presidential bid further illustrates how undifferentiated is today's antiwar movement.

The history of antiwar opposition to Iraq includes a diverse array of groups. From radical socialists and anarchists to anti-Semitics and paleocons, contemporary opposition to the Iraq war has united left-right fringe elements like never before.

As Victor Davis Hanson indicates:

It is becoming nearly impossible to sort the extreme rhetoric of the antiwar Left from that of the fringe paleo-Right. Both see the Iraqi war through the same lenses: the American effort is bound to fail and is a deep reflection of American pathology.

An anguished Cindy Sheehan calls Bush "the world's biggest terrorist." And she goes on to blame Israel for the death of her son ("Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel").

Her antiwar venom could easily come right out of the mouth of a more calculating David Duke. Perhaps that's why he lauded her anti-Semitism: "Courageously she has gone to Texas near the ranch of President Bush and braved the elements and a hostile Jewish supremacist media."

This odd symbiosis began right after 9/11. Then the lunatic Left mused about the "pure chaos" of the falling "two huge buck teeth" twin towers, lamented that they were more full of Democrats than Republicans, and saw the strike as righteous payback from third-world victims.

The mirror-imaging fundamentalists and censors in turn saw the attack as an angry God's retribution either for an array of our mortal sins or America's tilting toward Israel.

In Iraq, the Left thinks we are unfairly destroying others; the ultra-Right that we are being destroyed ourselves. The former alleges that we are bullying in our global influence, the latter that we are collapsing from our decadence.

But both, in their exasperation at George Bush's insistence on seeing Iraq emerge from the Hussein nightmare years with some sort of constitutional government, have embraced the paranoid style of personal invective.

In other words, when one breaks down all of the various antiwar strains, we see a common denominator of unpatriotic anti-Americanism.

These groups have been explicitly welcomed into the massive multipronged coalition Obama seeks to build, which he sees as nothing less than a full-blown social movement. As Elizabeth Drew notes:

Obama has a big idea: he believes that in order to change Washington ... and to reduce the power of the lobbies and "special interests," he must first build a large coalition—Democrats, independents, Republicans, whoever—to support him in his effort to change things. He has figured out that he cannot make the kinds of changes he's talking about if he has to fight for 51–49 majorities in Congress. Therefore, he's trying to build a broader coalition, and enlist the people who have come out to see him and are getting involved in politics for the first time because of him. If he can hold that force together, members of Congress, including the "old bulls," according to a campaign aide, "will look back home and see that there is a mandate for change." Thus, Obama talks about working "from the bottom up" to bring about change. When he says he will take on the special interests and the lobbies, to him it's not as far-fetched as most jaded Washingtonians think: he intends to do that with the army he's building.

To stress Drew's point once more: Obama seeks mobilize the support of whoever he can get, drawing all factions into his mass political coalition for change.

This coalition, as we can see from this analysis, includes progressives and paleoconservatives, and while different individuals may float in and out of the various factional groupings, the fundamental radical basis of Barack Obama's support is undeniable.

See also, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

Hat tip: Memeorandum

Joe Klein Channels Glenn Greenwald!

The Kagans are the most reviled bunch of neocons on the current scene, perhaps next to Bill Kristol.

The latest evidence of this is Joe Klein's post dismissing the Kagans as foolish:

On the day that John Yoo's remarkable torture memo is released, this foolishness is a reminder that none of these people--none of the vicious, mendacious, naive, simplistic, unapologetic, neo-colonialist ideologues who promulgated this disaster--should have even the vaguest claim on the time or tolerance of fair-minded people. Fred Kagan's certainty is an obscenity, his claim to expertise a farce.

Klein essentially "channels" Glenn Greenwald:

Fred Kagan, along with his writing partner Bill Kristol, specializes in planning and advocating more wars, always from afar. His family has a tradition of doing the same. His dad, whose career he has copied, is Donald Kagan, whom The Washington Post described as "a beloved father figure of the ascendant neoconservative movement." Several years ago, Fred co-wrote a book with his dad arguing that America is too afraid to fight wars and "that it will be in the world's ultimate interest for the United States to remain militarily strong and unafraid of a fight." Neither has ever fought anything.

Donald's other son -- Fred's brother -- is Robert, who founded Project for a New American Century with Bill Kristol and is a fanatical, resolute supporter of the Iraq War (from the pages of The Washington Post). Fred's wife, Kimberly Kagan, regularly types about how great the Iraq War is in The Weekly Standard and other places. None has any military service. They have no need for the troop relief provided by the Webb bill (which Fred opposes) because they are already all sitting at home....

The Fred Kagans and his dad and his brother and his wife and his best friend Bill Kristol sit back casually demanding more wars, demanding that our troops be denied any relief, demanding that the President call for other families to volunteer to fight in their wars...

If the Kagans all changed their names, started publishing under pseudonyms, and subsequently were successful in influencing national security policy under the next Republican administration, you'd see the same attacks on "fake-expertise" and the "faux-warrior" arguments that you see here.

(Mark my words on that if McCain's elected - new faces, same smears.)

The same last name just makes things easier for the surrender hawks to keep track of things.

(Maybe Kein's trying to get back in the good graces of Greenwald, who's become a rock star of the radical left. Greenwald's apparently attacked Klein for factual errors in his FISA reporting, and hey, nobody - and I mean nobody - better mess with Greenwald's creeping totalitarianism domestic surveillance meme!)

Note that Bill Roggio suggests things are going well for al Maliki, whose military strategy seeks to emulate of successul practices of the U.S. cointerinsurgency doctrines of the surge: "Iraqi Military Continues Operations in Basrah."

See more attacks at Memeorandum.

Freedom of Speech and the Islamist Threat

In the wake of the release of Geert Wilder's "Fitna," the government of Indonesia has warned YouTube to remove uploads of the movie, as this CNSNews story indicates (via Memeorandum):

The government of the world's most populous Islamic state says YouTube has two days to take down a Dutch lawmaker's provocative film on the Koran or it will block access to the popular video-sharing Web site.

The warning by Indonesia came as the U.N.'s primary human rights watchdog ended a month-long session amid allegations by Western member-states and non-governmental organizations that Islamic nations are working to curtail free speech.

Geert Wilder's 16-minute film linking Islam's revered text with terrorism has sparked protests in a number of countries. It also drew criticism from the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the European Union....

As of early Wednesday afternoon Indonesian time, attempts to view at least one earlier-available upload of the movie on YouTube brought up a message saying, "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."

But the film has been uploaded on YouTube by multiple users and can still be found with a simple search in both its English and Dutch versions.

In response to queries, a YouTube spokesperson said the site allows people "to express themselves and to communicate with a global audience."

"The diversity of the world in which we live - spanning the vast dimensions of ethnicity, religion, nationality, language, political opinion, gender, and sexual orientation, to name a few - means that some of the beliefs and views of some individuals may offend others," she said.

This is a big story, I would argue, and needs more mainstream media coverage. But check out Jason Pappas' post on Islam, terror, and free speech:

Freedom of speech is under assault. First and foremost is the threat to Wafa Sultan (hat/tip AOW). Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, she is a vocal critic of Islam. Very few step forward to speak the truth; few of us become public figures. The blessings of liberty that we, as listeners and readers require if the truth is to prevail, can only be as secured by protecting the few brave souls who enter the public realm and speak the truth.

In Europe, the threat is so great that Geert Wilders’ film can not be shown in public. After van Gogh’s death, no one will sponsor a showing. Even the Internet isn’t exempt from the threats of jihadists. His film was removed from several venues because of the threats to the families of the owners of these websites. But it keeps reappearing. At the moment it is here (hat/tip FPM). Watch it; it is powerful!

And don't miss this from Papas as well, on the Western denial syndrome surrounding Islam:

There is widespread denial, across the political spectrum, of Islam’s threat to our civilization. The far left has become so consumed by its hatred of our culture that it has abandoned its traditional hostility towards religion in the face of the revival of one of the most barbaric and oppressive religious ideologies in history. Having assumed a policy of anti-anti-Islam, the left has made what Horowitz calls an Unholy Alliance with our enemy, defending it at every opportunity. The anti-rational nihilistic post-modern left is a heavy weight on the whole left side of the spectrum, drowning out any sane voice of moderation. Such fashionable academic nonsense has already corrupted popular politics.The problem, however, isn’t confined to the left.

The right is split, with some having great difficulty facing the fact that a long-standing religious tradition, such as Islam, can be fundamentally inimical to our civilization to such a degree that it rivals the dangers of the last century. The ecumenical right can be as relativistic, at times, as the left by treating any religious-based ideology as just another path to God.

Along those lines, let me again quote Ladan Boroumand and Roya Boroumand, in "Terror, Islam, and Democracy":

As Western experts and commentators have wrestled with these questions, their intellectual disarray and bafflement in the face of radical Islamist (notice we do not say “Islamic”) terrorism have become painfully clear. This is worrisome, for however necessary an armed response might seem in the near term, it is undeniable that a successful long-term strategy for battling Islamism and its terrorists will require a clearer understanding of who these foes are, what they think, and how they understand their own motives. For terrorism is first and foremost an ideological and moral challenge to liberal democracy. The sooner the defenders of democracy realize this and grasp its implications, the sooner democracy can prepare itself to win the long-simmering war of ideas and values that exploded into full fury last September 11.

See also Allahpundit at Hot Air.

Photo: Madrid Bombing, March 11, 2004

Clarifying Basra's Implications

The implications of Nouri al Maliki's Basra offensive against Iraq's Sadrist militias are not fully known.

We do know, however, that war opponents are spinning last week's fighting as proof that Iraq is irreconcilable, and that the Bush administration's surge strategy was doomed from its inception (for some initial flavor of the debate, see Memeorandum).

It's thus important to evaluate the knowns and unknowns of the battle, which is the goal of Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan in their piece this morning, "The Basra Business":

MUCH OF THE DISCUSSION about recent Iraqi operations against illegal Shia militias has focused on issues about which we do not yet know enough to make sound judgments, overlooking important conclusions that are already clear. Coming days and weeks will provide greater insight into whether Maliki or Sadr gained or lost from this undertaking; how well or badly the Iraqi Security Forces performed; and what kind of deal (if any) the Iraqi Government accepted in return for Sadr's order to stand down his forces. The following lists provide a brief summary of what we can say with confidence about recent operations and what we cannot.

One the points I've made in my posts on the offensive is that the central government's demonstrated its increasing autonomy and capacity in Basra, measures which are important in assessing continuing progress toward democratic regime consolidation.

Kagan and Kagan begin with what is known about indices related to capacity and consolidation:

* The legitimate Government of Iraq and its legally-constituted security forces launched a security operation against illegal, foreign-backed, insurgent and criminal militias serving leaders who openly call for the defeat and humiliation of the United States and its allies in Iraq and throughout the region. We can be ambivalent about the political motivations of Maliki and his allies, but we cannot be ambivalent about the outcome of this combat between our open allies and our open enemies.

* The Sadrists and Special Groups failed to set Iraq alight despite their efforts--Iraqi forces kept the Five Cities area (Najaf, Karbala, Hillah, Diwaniyah, and Kut) under control with very little Coalition assistance; Iraqi and Coalition forces kept Baghdad under control.

* Sadr never moved to return to Iraq, ordered his forces to stop fighting without achieving anything, and further demonstrated his dependence on (and control by) Iran.

* Maliki demonstrated a surprising and remarkable commitment to fighting Iranian-backed Special Groups, Sadr's Jaish al Mahdi (the Mahdi Army, or JAM), and even criminal elements of JAM. The Iraqi Government has loudly declared that "enforcing the law" applies to Shia areas as well as Sunni. Maliki has called Shia militias "worse than al Qaeda." These are things we've been pressing him to do for nearly two years.

* We've said all along that we did not think the ISF was ready to take care of the security situation on its own. Maliki was overconfident and overly-optimistic. But for those who keep pressing the Iraqis to "step up," here's absolute proof that they are willing. Are we willing to support them when they do what we demand? Can anyone reasonably argue that they will do better if we pull out completely?

Read the whole thing.

As I've pointed out as well, military commanders have been careful not to overstate American and Iraqi security gains, and officials continue to make the case for a pause in troop redeployments as the surge winds down. These are not unreasonable assessments and recommendations. Even former naysayers of a Democratic Iraq have conceded the high potential for the consolidation of Iraq's democracy.

Yet, those unwilling to look at both the plusses and minuses will continue to demonize the administration, military leaders, and the troops in their yearning for an American defeat in Mesopotamia.

While large issues remain, neither success nor failure is predetermined at this point, and there's hardly cause to argue quitting the deployment.

Note also that the Kagans' analysis calls into question some of Anthony Cordesman's coolly reasoned appraisal of the fighting, "A Civil War Iraq Can’t Win."

Distorting McCain on Iraq

The big meme now among left-wing critics of John McCain is the allegation that the Arizona Senator's various statements on Iraq suggest he's not the national security expert he claims to be, and this by implication makes him unfit for command.

The problem is that critics are distorting and twisting what McCain actually said. Barack Obama, in fact, is now attacking McCain's statements with rank mischaracterizations, as Zachary Roth indicates:

Ever since John McCain said at a town hall meeting in January that he could see U.S. troops staying in Iraq for a hundred years, the Democrats have been trying to use the quote to paint the Arizona senator as a dangerous warmonger. And lately, Barack Obama in particular has stepped up his attacks on McCain’s “100 years” notion.

But in doing so, Obama is seriously misleading voters—if not outright lying to them—about exactly what McCain said. And some in the press are failing to call him on it.

Here’s McCain’s full quote, in context, from back in January:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing. As he says, we’ve had troops in South Korea for over fifty years, but few people think that means we’re still fighting the Korean War.

Nevertheless, back in February, Obama said: “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another hundred years.”

And, on a separate occasion: “(McCain) says that he is willing to send our troops into another hundred years of war in Iraq.”

Since then, some conservatives have drawn attention to the distortion, and Obama’s been a bit more careful with his language. Today, for instance, he said: “We can’t afford to stay in Iraq, like John McCain said, for another hundred years.” It’s technically true that McCain said that, but Obama’s clear goal in phrasing it that way was to imply, falsely, that McCain wants the war to continue for that long. In other words, he’s gone from lying about what McCain said to being deeply misleading about it. Progress, of a kind.

Still, some outlets continue to portray the issue as a he-said, she-said spat. A long takeout on the controversy by ABC News, opining that McCain’s comment “handed his Democratic opponents and war critics a weapon with which to bludgeon him,” is headlined: “McCain’s 100 Year Remark Hands Ammo to War Critics: McCain Haunted by January Remarks Suggesting 100 More Years in Iraq.” And today’s L.A. Times story, headlined “Obama, McCain Bicker Over Iraq,” is similarly neutral.

To be fair, the ABC News piece does provide the quote in its full context, giving enough information to allow conscientious readers to figure out the truth. That’s better than the L.A. Times piece, which says only that “McCain has stressed since then that he meant that U.S. troops might need to remain to support Iraqi forces, not to wage full-scale warfare”—instead of simply telling readers that it’s clear from the context that McCain did indeed mean that. Still, neither piece stated high up and unequivocally that Obama is distorting McCain’s words.

To be clear, if Obama wants to take issue with McCain’s willingness to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for a hundred years in any capacity, that’s obviously his right. But that’s not the same as misleading voters about what McCain is proposing,

This matters. Obama has given every indication that his general election strategy on Iraq and foreign policy will be to portray McCain as dangerously bellicose. If he’s going to do so by distorting McCain’s words, the press should forcefully call him out on it each time.

Check out Joe Klein, as well, who strains in his post to demonstrate that McCain's off-hand reflections on a potential 100-year commitment to Iraq are part-and-parcel to a fundamental ignorance of Iraqi politics and regious factionalism:

The problem with John McCain's 100 years in Iraq formulation isn't that he's calling for 95 more years of combat--he isn't--but that he thinks you can have a long-term basing arrangement in Iraq similar to those we have in Germany or Korea. That betrays a fairly acute lack of knowledge about both Iraq and Islam. It may well be possible to station U.S. troops in small, peripheral kingdoms like Dubai or Kuwait, but Iraq is--and has always been--volatile, tenuous, centrally-located and nearly as sensitive to the presence of infidels as Saudi Arabia. It is a terrible candidate for a long-term basing agreement.

Furthermore, McCain's frequent "You don't know anything" tirades about national security might be more effective if he had a better sense of the war in question. When I asked him about Basra in January, he assured me that it was "not a problem." Last week, he seemed to think it was a good idea for the militia that calls itself the Iraqi Army to attack the militia that calls itself the Mahdi Army. So did George W. Bush, who posited it as the good guys fighting the "terrorists." This betrayed a fundamental lack of knowledge about Shi'ite politics, something any good President or presidential contender--especially one who styles himself a "national security" expert--needs to study. McCain surely knows more about the military than Barack Obama does--and Obama certainly needs to learn more--but McCain's carelessness and oversimplification, and wrong analysis, when it comes to the situation in Iraq puts him in a surprisingly vulnerable position.

It's not unreasonable to consider a long-term military commitments in Iraq, especially in the context of America's previous commitments to countries like Germany and Japan.

But the attacks on McCain are not reasonable. Every nuance or shading that might show considered contemplation is being portrayed a fuzzy bumbling or incoherence.

The meme is not going to prove very effective in taking down McCain. If anything, the attacks and mischaracterizations reveal the inability of McCain's opponents to offer something more substantive than their own appeals to appeasement, retreat, and surrender.

For more examples, see Think Progress' latest McCain smear, "CNN catches McCain making contradictory statements about Sadr."

See also all the left-wing umbrage at Memeorandum.

Imagine, Obama a Liberal: It's Easy If You Try

Peter Wehner, over at the Wall Street Journal, suggests the Barack Obama's working hard to dismiss characterizations that he's a liberal.

Can we imagine Obama as a liberal? It's easy if you try.

Here's Wehner, stoking the imagination:

Mr. Obama needs to inoculate himself against the claim that he's a liberal. For the past quarter-century it has been consistently the most effective charge made by Republicans against Democrats. America is a center-right country and in modern times has not elected a thoroughgoing liberal as president (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton ran as moderate Democrats). The problem is that, by any reasonable standard, Mr. Obama is an orthodox liberal.

National Journal rated him as the most liberal person in the Senate in 2007, and for good reason. On economic policy, Mr. Obama favors higher income, Social Security and corporate taxes. He supports massive increases in domestic spending and greater government regulation of the economy. He favors a significantly larger role for the federal government in health care. He opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mr. Obama has criticized the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a partial birth abortion ban, and he wants to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. He voted against John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. In Illinois, Mr. Obama supported banning the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. And he supports granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

On national security matters, Mr. Obama voted to deny legal immunity to telecom companies that have cooperated with the government in warrantless wiretapping of suspected terrorists. He wants to grant habeas corpus rights to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. He supports a full-scale withdrawal from Iraq. And he says, in his first year in office, he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea without preconditions.

It's no wonder that Mr. Obama has been endorsed by Moveon.org – one of the most radical groups within the liberal universe.

Wow!

For all my hip, up-to-the minute posting, this is the first I've heard that MoveOn's backed Obama's presidentail bid - and I thought I'd hit the Mother Load with Tom Hayden's call for a progressive coalition rallying rally to the Illinois Senator's banner!

The MoveOn endorsement is here.

Of course, I've been on top of Obama's ties to black liberation theology, which erupted in the Wright controversy.

Wehner's got more:

Adding to Mr. Obama's problems is his close association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American rantings are the kind of thing routinely said by the far left.

For whatever reason, Mr. Obama has failed to do what Mr. Clinton did in 1992 – run as a "new" Democrat who favors some conservative policies (ending welfare as we know it, supporting free trade, criticizing the "butchers of Beijing," and famously criticizing Sister Souljah).

Since Mr. Obama's record reveals him to be a doctrinaire liberal, he dismisses ideological labels as simplistic, misleading and outmoded. When asked if he's comfortable with the liberal label, he says, "This is what I would call old politics. This is the stuff we're trying to get rid of . . . Those old categories don't work, and they're preventing us from solving problems."

In fact, "liberal" and "conservative" can be useful (if incomplete) monikers – a shorthand way of describing where an individual stands on issues and, as importantly, their political philosophy. They are an indicator of a person's underlying assumptions, the propositions they embrace or reject. Mr. Obama's effort to present himself as a post-ideological figure is an effort to avoid an important national debate. And John McCain should not let Mr. Obama (assuming he wins the Democratic nomination) get away with it....

Mr. McCain needs to present a compelling case on the foundational beliefs that divide liberalism and conservatism....

His challenge is to make his case well enough to convince Americans not only that Mr. Obama is a liberal, but that having a liberal in the White House would do real damage to our country.

I'll second that motion!

Fortunately, we've already seen a preview of McCain's willingness to be forthcoming in his campaign style, for example, in the appropriately themed advertisment, "An American President."

*********

Footnote: As readers here will recall, Obama's seeking to build a large, multipronged political coalition, which now includes hardline progressives seeking to transform the U.S. into socialist state; and with some arguing that the political center's recently shifted further to the left, the "liberal" label in 2008 is thus closer to socialism than one might think.

See also, "No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama."

John McCain's Democratic Realism

A couple of weeks back, the Los Angleles Times ran an fuzzy article on John McCain's international orientation, "McCain's Mixed Signals on Foreign Policy":

The presumptive GOP nominee for president, McCain ... has adopted a surprising diversity of views on foreign policy issues during his 25 years in Congress. It is a pattern that brings uncertainty to the path he would take if elected.

It is true that McCain's views on America's international role have been complicated and diverse, but the Arizona Senator's more firm today - on the nation's goodness in the world and on the priority of protecting American national security - than ever. Thus, it's simply not accurate to announce we'd see an "uncertain path" in foreign policy under a McCain administration.

What's interesting about this notion of McCain's international uncertainty is that our enemies aren't buying it, nor are our domestic surrender hawks, who're suggesting McCain makes Curtis LeMay look like a choir boy:

...McCain may deviate from right-wing dogma on discrete issues when it comes to domestic policy questions. But on questions of foreign policy, national security and war, McCain ... [is] as extremist as it gets in the mainstream political spectrum. On those obviously central issues, there simply is nobody and nothing to the Right of McCain.

Why the soft-peddling in the mainstream media and the radical left's demonization? Apparently McCain's breaking the molds of conventional foreign policy thinking, which befuddles the corporate press and enrages our most implacable left-wing appeasement advocates.

The reality, however, as was seen in last week's major foreign policy address, is that McCain's unflinching support for Iraq, and his essential belief in the promise of an international concert of great democratic powers, offers a compelling vision of American international leadership in the post-Bush era.

This is John McCain's democratic realism, as Joseph Loconte points out, at the Weekly Standard:

JOHN MCCAIN'S FIRST MAJOR foreign policy speech as the presumed Republican nominee for president, delivered last week in Los Angeles, was widely viewed as an effort to distance himself from President George W. Bush. The Washington Post said his agenda "contrasts sharply" with the "go-it-alone approach" of the Bush administration. London's Telegraph discerned a "more practical, less ideological approach" to the war on terror. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh accused McCain of rejecting America's superpower status and "pandering to the hate-America crowd." New York Times columnist David Brooks claimed that unlike Bush, McCain wants to "protect the fabric of the international system."

The flabbiness of these critiques, though, becomes apparent when McCain's speech is read carefully and alongside his other foreign policy statements. For starters, McCain shows little interest in the "fabric" of an alleged "international system"--a concept as coherent as tapioca pudding--and even less interest in protecting it.

In fact, McCain seems intent on either shaking up existing international organizations--making sure the G-8 remains a club of market democracies by keeping Russia out, for example--or creating new ones. He calls for the formation of a "new global compact" of democratic nations, a "coalition for peace and freedom." McCain envisions a "League of Democracies" which can "harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interest." In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, he explained that U.S. soldiers are serving in Afghanistan with British, Canadian, Dutch, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Spanish, and Turkish troops from the NATO alliance--all democratic states. Yet they lack an overarching set of political and economic priorities to meet today's challenges.

McCain's League of Democracies, to be convened and led by the United States, would function under a new political rubric. In his Foreign Affairs article, he writes that the organization could offer "united democratic action" to confront threats and crises whenever the United Nations failed to do so--failures, of course, as predictable and plentiful as cicadas in summertime. In his speech to the World Affairs Council, McCain notably made no reference to the United Nations or the U.N. Security Council. So much for the delicate fabric of the global community.

In his attention to America's allies, McCain insists he is a realist--the United States simply cannot overcome global challenges on its own. It requires the help of the world's democratic states, including the European Union (most of whose members belong to NATO), India, Japan, South Korea and others. Moreover, he argues, political and military power is no longer concentrated in the United States as it was during the Cold War. "We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to," he said. "We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them." Exhibit A for the McCain doctrine might be Afghanistan. Five years after the United States toppled the Taliban and routed al Qaeda, they remain a dangerous source of instability in the country. American and British forces, wearied and overstretched, are doing most of the fighting because other NATO members have declined to step up. Yes, alliances matter.

Nevertheless, many conservatives balk at McCain's conciliatory tone. His speech was "just pandering to the people who think we're the problem in the world," Limbaugh complained. "The United States is the solution to the problems of the world." The notion, though, that America could happily manage without friends or alliances is not just hubris; it is the well-worn path to decline--political, economic, and moral. "The tyrant is a child of Pride who drinks from his great sickening cup recklessness and vanity," wrote Sophocles, "until from his high crest headlong he plummets to the dust of hope."

Is McCain's democracy agenda a stark departure from the Bush doctrine? In the fall of 2003, Bush announced a new "forward strategy of freedom" for the Middle East: an end to America's Cold War compromise with illiberal Arab regimes for the sake of stability. McCain equally rejects the "realist" bargain; it only helped to produce "a perfect storm of intolerance and hatred." His alternative: "We must help expand the power and reach of freedom" in the Middle East, using every diplomatic tool available. "It is the democracies of the world," he argues, "that will provide the pillars upon which we can and must build an enduring peace." In a judgment that is anathema to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, McCain thus binds the struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq to America's political destiny. "Whether they eventually become stable democracies themselves, or are allowed to sink back into chaos and extremism, will determine not only the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well."

In this, McCain subscribes to a view of America's national security interests in sync not only with the Bush administration, but also with any honest reading of the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission Report. America faces a global threat from religious extremists determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction to use against civilian populations. They seek the help of rogue nations that share what McCain calls "the same animating hatred for the West." Neither diplomacy nor changes in policy can temper these hatreds. "This is the central threat of our time," he said, "and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges could have for our success in defeating it."

In other words, the "transcendent challenge" of radical jihadism, as McCain puts it repeatedly, is the lens through which the next U.S. president must view American foreign policy. Any contender for the office who rejects this doctrine, he reasons, "does not deserve to sit in the White House."

That's right, they don't deserve to occupy the White House, because the U.S. today needs unflinching leadership and resolve in the next commander-in-chief, who will direct American national security policy in an age of shifting power dynamics in world affairs, marked with special emphasis by Islam's battle against the West.

Retreating from Iraq (Clinton and Obama) or playing nice with our enemies (Obama) is the last thing the country needs right now, despite the arguments of left's irretrievable defeatists.

See also, Charles Krauthammer,"Democratic Realism:An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World."